RESOURCES
RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE
SUMMER 2006 · ISSUE NUMBER 162
A Blueprint for
Public Participation
RESOURCES
From the President
SU M M E R 2006 · ISSU E N U M B E R 162
Phil Sharp
A Not-So Innocent Abroad
Nothing really prepares you for your first trip to China. I flew into Beijing on a Sunday afternoon, and that night, 300,000 tons of the Gobi Desert descended on the
city streets. Although sandstorms occur every spring, this one was unusually intense,
with more than a quarter of an inch of brown dust covering everything.
The storm dramatically brought home for me both the power of nature and the
difficulty we have in coping when the resulting problems grow exponentially in
scale. While thousands of people wielding push brooms and driving water trucks
that sprayed the streets cleaned up Beijing the next day, the plume from that sandstorm blew into Korea and Japan, and most likely reached the West Coast of the
United States. Without question, international and cross-boundary environmental
problems are going to become all the more important in years ahead.
I went to China at the request of Bo Cutter, an RFF Board member, to confer
with Chinese officials and industry representatives on energy policy. Having read
many reports and watched plenty of documentaries, I was well aware that China
was undergoing rapid economic growth and that environmental problems were
mounting. But what struck me was the incredible consumerism that has taken hold
there. In the streets, you see thousands and thousands of cars where once bicycles
dominated.
I was just as struck by how open officials were about the problems they see in
the country, in terms of both the environment as well as the economic inequalities
that are exacerbated by rapid growth. While I was there, the government announced
very publicly its own failure to meet its environmental goals. It certainly would be
nice to see more U.S. leaders willing to be honest about the status of things in our
own country! Make no mistake—our system is radically more open than theirs. But
we should acknowledge that the Chinese can have frank, serious, and broad-based
discussions about policy. However, their candor only goes so far: I got a taste of the
government’s power when a CNN International broadcast on protests in America
over Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit was censored.
It is readily apparent that the United States—and indeed, the world—has much
at stake in the extraordinary changes going on in China and elsewhere in the developing world as the pressure on global resources intensifies.
RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE
1616 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036–1400
202-328-5000
Fax: 202-939-3460
Editorial: day@rff.org
Address changes: hase@rff.org
Internet: www.rff.org
OFFICERS
President, Philip R. Sharp
Vice President–External Affairs, Lesli A. Creedon
Vice President–Finance & Administration, Edward F. Hand
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Frank E. Loy, Chair
Lawrence H. Linden, Vice-Chair
Catherine G. Abbott, Vicky A. Bailey, Michael J. Bean,
Preston S. Chiaro, Norman L. Christensen, Jr.,
Maureen L. Cropper, W. Bowman Cutter, John M. Deutch,
E. Linn Draper, Jr., Mohamed T. El-Ashry, J. Andres
Espinosa, Daniel C. Esty, Dod A. Fraser, Kathryn S. Fuller,
Mary A. Gade, James C. Greenwood, David G. Hawkins,
Michael A. Mantell, James F. O’Grady, Jr., Steven W. Percy,
Matthew R. Simmons, Robert N. Stavins, Joseph E. Stiglitz
RESOURCES
Stanley N. Wellborn, Director of Communications
Felicia Day, Managing Editor
Sarah Beam, Assistant Editor
Marc Alain Meadows, Art Director
Published quarterly since 1959, Resources (ISSN 00487376) contains news of research and policy analysis regarding natural resources and the environment. The views offered
are those of the contributors and should not be attributed to
Resources for the Future, its directors, or its officers.
© 2006 Resources for the Future. All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced by any means,
either electronic or mechanical, without permission
from the publisher. Contact Felicia Day at RFF (email:
day@rff.org).
Resources is sent to individuals and institutions at no cost.
To subscribe, contact Scott Hase at RFF (hase@rff.org) or
202-328-5006. The publication is also available on the RFF
website, www.rff.org.
Cover illustration by Randy Lyhus
Design and production: Meadows Design Office, Inc.
®
r ‰ Printed with soy-based inks on 50% recycled
(and recyclable) paper containing 15% post-consumer
fiber; processed chlorine free.
CONTENTS
DEPARTMENTS
FEATURES
Contributors
The Nonmarket Benefits of Nature:
What Should Be Counted in Green GDP? 6
About the scholars featured in
this issue 2
James W. Boyd
Goings On
CAFE Reforms Could Address LongTerm Oil Consumption, RFF Scholars
Testify Before House, Senate 3
Swimming Upstream: The Challenges of
Managing the World’s Fisheries 10
An interview with James N. Sanchirico
How Do International Crises Affect
Trade in Oil? Robert J. Weiner 4
Adding a Public Voice to Investing the
“Hot Air” Windfall Ruth Greenspan Bell
and Elena Safirova 5
“Ground Truthing” Policy:
Using Participatory Map-Making to Connect
Citizens and Decision Makers 14
Inside RFF
Shalini P. Vajjhala
Former Spofford Interns Continue
to Work on Chinese Environmental
Issues Ruth Greenspan Bell 23
Mining Executive and New RFF Board
Member Calls for Action on Global
Warming 24
The Role of Forest Sinks in a
Post-Kyoto World 19
Roger A. Sedjo and Masahiro Amano
RESOURCE
Resource Links
Learn more about the feature stories
in this issue. The following links will
take you to special pages on the RFF
website:
LINKS
Learn more about the feature stories in this issue. The following links will take you to
special pages on the RFF website:
The Nonmarket Benefits of Nature: www.rff.org/greengdp
Swimming Upstream: www.rff.org/swimmingupstream
“Ground Truthing” Policy: www.rff.org/participatorymapmaking
The Role of Forest Sinks in a Post-Kyoto World: www.rff.org/roleofforestsinks
Contributors
Masahiro Amano is a professor of forestry at Waseda University, Japan, and chair-
2
Masahiro Amano
Ruth Greenspan Bell
James W. Boyd
Elena Safirova
James N. Sanchirico
Roger A. Sedjo
Shalini P. Vajjhala
Robert J. Weiner
man of the Japanese Ministry of the Environment’s Committee on Carbon Sinks
for the Kyoto Protocol. Previously, he was director of the Forest Management Division at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute.
RFF Resident Scholar Ruth Greenspan Bell’s interests focus on how to develop
a more robust culture of compliance in countries in economic and political transition and in the developing world. She directs the International Institutional Development and Environmental Assistance Initiative, a program designed to help
countries build more effective systems of environmental protection.
James W. Boyd is a senior fellow and division director of RFF’s Energy and Natural Resources Division. He works in the fields of environmental regulation and
environmental law and economics, focusing on the analysis of environmental
institutions and policy. Current research focuses on the development of environmental benefit indicators for use in both environmental management and national
welfare accounting.
Elena Safirova, an RFF fellow, conducts economic modeling and policy analysis
related to transportation and urban land use. She is currently modeling longterm projections of air quality based on policy, population, land use, and transportation changes.
RFF Fellow James N. Sanchirico is an expert on the economics of managing living biological resources, such as fisheries, biodiversity, and invasive species, with
an emphasis on marine issues. An overarching theme of his ocean research is understanding the potential benefits and costs of zoning the oceans, an approach
akin to zoning land.
Roger A. Sedjo, an RFF senior fellow, has directed RFF’s Forest Economics and
Policy Program for more than 25 years. He is an expert on forest economics and
policy and helped write a number of major International Panel on Climate
Changes reports addressing climate and forests. He has also examined sequestration incentives and trading mechanisms.
RFF Fellow Shalini P. Vajjhala studies the social impacts of large-scale physical
and economic phenomena. Her work has taken her all over the globe, from
Lesotho, where she mapped mobility and access patterns of isolated villages, to
India, where she studied resettlement issues, to Pittsburgh, where she engaged in
community planning in low-income neighborhoods.
Robert J. Weiner is RFF’s 2005–06 Gilbert F. White Fellow. His work at RFF focuses on understanding why oil prices are so high and so volatile, examining in
particular the role of speculators and speculation in oil trading. He comes to
RFF from George Washington University, where he is professor of international
business and international affairs. ■
RESOURCES
Goings On
CAFE Reforms Could Address Long-Term
Oil Consumption, RFF Scholars Testify
Before House, Senate
A
s oil prices climbed throughout the spring and the public
looked for relief at the pump
as the summer travel season approached, RFF President Phil Sharp
and Senior Fellow Billy Pizer were
called before a May 3 House Energy
and Commerce Committee hearing to
testify on how reforming the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE)
standards might affect the issue. The
following week, Sharp appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s
Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine to discuss
the same subject.
“CAFE has been a very imperfect,
but important, policy in dealing with
fuel consumption,” Sharp testified.
“The [National Academy of Science’s
CAFE review panel] concluded, in
2002, that our oil imports would have
been 2.8 million barrels a day higher
had the policy not existed. That said,
the academy report outlines possible
reforms that could improve the standards.”
Sharp was careful to note that while
reforming CAFE standards could have
many benefits, reducing gasoline
prices is not among them.
“Action now by Congress on fuel
economy standards obviously will have
no immediate impact on gasoline
prices. Indeed, it will take some years
for changes in the policy to have any
SUMMER 2006
impact at all,” he said. “But action now
on fuel economy standards can help
the United States address important
concerns over the longer term.”
However, he noted that high gasoline prices and uncertainty about the
future of the oil market have increased attention to fuel efficiency
and alternative fuels. This presents
Congress with a rare opportunity to
act on a contentious issue. “After 20
years of stalemate on fuel economy issues,” he said, “we finally have a moment where change is possible.”
Pizer outlined for the committee opportunities to reform CAFE standards
for passenger cars in light of recent reforms to the light truck standards.
“The light-truck rule provides a
model for two improvements: differentiating manufacturers’ standards based
on their mix of large and small vehicles, and setting the overall level of
the standards based on an explicit and
careful cost-benefit analysis,” he said.
“Further reforms include trading
between the passenger-car and lighttruck fleets, trading among manufacturers, unrestricted banking of CAFE
credits earned by exceeding the standard, and a cost-limiting safety valve.”
The hearings came as the National
Highway Transportation and Safety
Administration (NHTSA) called on
Congress to grant it the authority to
make changes to passenger-vehicle
standards. Bills that would allow
NHTSA to do so are pending in both
the House and the Senate, and Pizer
and Sharp both remarked that delegating target setting and redesign to
NHTSA made sense.
“I find the complexity of the standard-setting process, as well as the need
to regularly revisit the level of the standard, to be more suitable for agency
rulemaking than Congressional action,”
Pizer stated. “Congress can instead reform the structure of CAFE to increase
efficiency, continue to give NHTSA
clear guidance on the key costs and
benefits it should consider, and perhaps
require greater transparency with regard to the cost modeling.”
Sharp also noted that policymakers
might want to look beyond CAFE for
ways to reduce fuel consumption.
“Many experts believe that a more
effective approach to reducing fuel consumption—and a more cost-effective
approach for the U.S. economy—
would be a stronger gasoline or oil tax,
either as an alternative to CAFE or in
conjunction with it,” he said. “The impact would not only encourage consumers to purchase more efficient vehicles, but it would also encourage
them to be more economical in their
driving, a critical component that
CAFE does nothing to address. Indeed, such a tax would have a more
rapid impact on consumption than is
possible through CAFE alone.” ■
3
How Do International
Crises Affect Trade
in Oil?
Robert J. Weiner
My research shows that the crisis diminished the role that intermediaries
played in petroleum sales—both during the crisis and after.
Intermediaries work as middlemen,
connecting buyers and sellers in international trade and serving as the glue
that holds many commodity markets
together. Along with national oil
companies, these intermediaries have
come to complement (and in some
cases replace) the so-called Seven
R
ecurring oil crises in recent
decades have sparked much of
the concern and debate regarding energy policy among government and industry officials, the media,
and the public. From the energy instabilities and oil embargo of the early
1970s through today’s high oil prices
and conflict in the Middle East, oil
shocks have been a dramatic feature of
the international economic landscape.
These shocks have been followed by
recessions in the United States and
other industrialized nations, as well as
oil-importing developing countries. In
his 2006 State of the Union Address,
President Bush pronounced America
“addicted to oil” and conceded that
oil as an energy source is prone to
volatility and supply disruptions.
One of the most significant oil
shocks occurred after Iraq invaded
Kuwait in 1990. The invasion touched
off an economic, financial, diplomatic,
and military crisis, triggering a
tremendous spike in oil prices and recession in Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development and
oil-importing developing countries.
But was the Gulf Crisis really a market
disruption? Did it tear the fabric of
trade in the world oil market?
To answer this question, I decided
to study the changing role of international trade intermediaries—often referred to as trading companies—in
the oil market during the Gulf War.
4
Sisters—the corporate energy giants
that dominated international oil trade
from the 1920s until the early 1970s.
But although they have attracted harsh
scrutiny from policymakers for their
role in the United Nations’ Iraqi Oilfor-Food Program, intermediaries have
received limited attention in the research literature.
My research takes advantage of a
unique database of individual sales
transactions in the Brent market. Produced in the U.K. North Sea, Brent
Blend is by far the most widely traded
crude oil in the international market.
The database is unusual in that it
identifies the terms of each crude oil
transaction, as well as the buyer and
seller of each cargo traded, whereas
terms of individual transactions are
not typically available to researchers,
despite their enormous size.
This database is generated by a
daily trade-press survey of oil traders.
Participants in the Brent market are
diverse, with the largest traders falling
into two categories. The first comprises oil companies, including the
majors (Exxon, BP, Shell, etc.), other
integrated petroleum companies,
producers, refiners, and national oil
companies. The second category comprises financial houses and trading
companies—Wall Street banks, commodity traders, and Japanese general
trading companies. This diversity provides an opportunity to test hypotheses regarding behavioral differences
across types of companies before, during, and after the crisis.
The evidence makes it clear that
the Gulf Crisis indeed affected patterns of oil trade. These patterns
changed significantly during the crisis,
with intermediaries playing a smaller
role than before in serving as counterparties to the large oil companies that
produce and refine the commodity.
Moreover, although the crisis ended as
abruptly as it had begun, and oil
prices declined sharply to pre-crisis
levels, the previous status quo was not
restored. One possible explanation is
that lightly capitalized trading companies were seen as less creditworthy after the crisis than before.
Intermediaries continue to be important in world oil trade, notwithstanding predictions of their demise as
a result of improved information systems. Some intermediaries have entered upstream or downstream segments of the industry; the reason for
others’ survival is hard to pinpoint,
given the paucity of data. The dominant role played by trading companies
as purchasers of Iraq’s oil exports during the UN Oil-for-Food Program suggests the usefulness of ongoing research into their role and behavior in
international oil trade. ■
RESOURCES
Adding a Public Voice to Investing the
“Hot Air” Windfall
Ruth Greenspan Bell and Elena Safirova
might change hands. Much of the
thinking about green investment has
taken place within a relatively small
community of climate scholars, activists, and government, but the implications are important for a broader
swatch of society. A public voice helps
assure a more transparent process
and open procedures.
An “Expiring” Opportunity
O
ne of the more controversial
provisions of the Kyoto Protocol gives Russia, Ukraine,
and countries in Central and Eastern
Europe the right to sell or trade excess emissions credits, which were
gained because the protocol set emissions targets at 1990 levels, after
which many of these countries’
economies (and emissions levels) collapsed.
These fortuitous credits, often referred to by critics as “hot air,” are unlikely to have any salutary effect on
greenhouse gas reductions because
they are not associated with future reductions in emissions. They also represent an enormous windfall: the potential revenue from their sale could
amount to billions of dollars.
This revenue presents a singular
opportunity to bring about lasting
change in Russia, Ukraine, and Central and Eastern European countries.
Properly channeled, revenues from
excess credits could provide direct
support for projects such as curtailing
energy consumption and switching to
low- or non-carbon energy sources
that reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
as well as for other environmental
efforts. Funding would also help build
institutional and human capacity to
administer such projects and assure
their long-term success.
We are engaged in a joint effort to
consider how two countries, Poland
SUMMER 2006
and Ukraine, which are holding large
quantities of credits, can invest the
proceeds in ways that will build their
capacity to better manage their greenhouse gas emissions. Our partners
are Poland’s Institute for Sustainable
Development, which is headed by
Andrzej Kassenberg, and the Institute
for Industrial Ecology, Kiev, Ukraine,
with the active participation of Olga
Gassan-zade.
Together, we have planned a combination of joint research, formulation of policy alternatives, and dissemination of those options into the
policy arena in each country. What is
innovative about this plan is the effort
to add a public voice and independent policy analysis to ongoing discussions on how the proceeds from these
sales might be used to advance environmental protection.
We believe that a public voice is essential to the eventual success of such
plans, for at least two reasons. The
first is that local experts can provide
valuable insight into the institutional
capacity and readiness to act in each
of their countries. Moreover, local
knowledge should be a part of any
analysis of investment goals and how
these are carried out, and in many
cases can help evaluate the credibility
of potential investments.
The second reason is that a public
voice has value in all situations where
potentially huge amounts of money
Hot-air credits are technically slated
to “expire” at the end of the first
Kyoto commitment period, and various procedural issues have yet to be
worked out before sales of credits can
start. Today it is still unclear how high
the demand will be. On the other
hand, the credits are a temptation for
countries having difficulty meeting
their Kyoto targets, and many have expressed a preference for “greened”
credits that would effectively link the
purchase of credits with investments
and activities that reduce greenhouse
gas emissions.
Two other Kyoto Protocol flexible
mechanisms, the Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI), allow participating industrialized countries to invest in
emissions-reducing projects in other
countries in lieu of reducing their
own emissions. However, CDM and JI
projects are neither easy nor quick to
develop; among other things, they
must be certified by special commissions to allow the credits to be transferred.
Experts predict that sales of hot-air
credits will pick up as 2012 nears and
the pressure to meet Kyoto obligations escalates. If that happens, it
will be critical that the countries in
Eastern and Central Europe have
effective green investment programs
in place to make sure that their potential hot air does not vanish into
thin air. ■
5
T H E N O NMA R K E T B E N E F I T S O F N A T U R E
WHAT SHOU LD BE COU NTE D I N G RE E N G DP?
By James W. Boyd
6
To estimate the value of goods and services in an economy and track its growth, countries
use various measures of national income and output. The most visible and influential of the
national accounts is gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of the total value of final goods
and services produced within a country in a given period. Although GDP captures only a part
of what is important about an economy, it deserves a special status because it represents a
significant bottom line: how much the market economy produces and what it is worth.
For years, both environmentalists and economists have called for a “green GDP” that measures what is valuable about nature, excluding goods and services that are already captured
in GDP, such as nature’s contributions to commercial harvests and other products. This approach has been advanced by the director of Sweden’s Beijer Institute, Karl-Göran Mäler, and
others in the early 1990s and has attracted the interest of governments around the world.
More recently, RFF researcher Spencer Banzhaf and I have been using economic principles
to define ecological units of account. These have a wide variety of applications, including
strategic planning, government performance assessment, transfer of environmental benefit
estimates, and green GDP accounting.
Why measure green GDP? For environmentalists, well-being provided by nature is as important as well-being provided by market consumption. Societies should be able to see how
market consumption affects the consumption of public goods like beautiful views, clean air,
and clean water. Another reason to measure green GDP is to track the provision of nature’s
benefits over time, either to hold governments accountable or to compare their environmental conditions with those of another country. Economists want society to articulate tradeoffs, measure performance, and maximize social well-being. These tasks are impossible to
achieve when nature’s contribution to human welfare is not measured.
However, measuring the benefits that arise from public goods provided by nature is no
small task. Indeed, just this May, China announced that it was scrapping a two-year effort to
develop a green GDP index, citing problems of calculation; instead, it will focus on a method
of green accounting to be presented alongside gross domestic product. And as the United
Nations notes in its 2003 publication, Handbook of National Accounting, “there is no consensus
on how ‘green GDP’ can be calculated and, in fact, still less consensus on whether it should
be attempted at all.”
Despite its difficulties, I argue that the calculation of a green GDP can and should be attempted. The benefits of nature are too important and too large to be “left off the table” of
national accounting. The real difficulties should not distract from the practical steps that can
begin immediately. One reason that these steps have not been clarified is that economists
RESOURCES
have not previously integrated principles from accounting economics with those from environmental economics. I use both ecological and economic theory to describe what should—
and should not—be counted by green GDP.
Making Green Accounting More Precise
GDP counts units in the market economy—cars, houses, legal services, loaves of bread, and
so on. Unfortunately, nature does not come prepackaged in this way. So what should green
GDP count?
GDP and its green counterpart must first count what is enjoyed or consumed. GDP measures two basic things: quantities of goods and services, and the prices of those goods and
services. We need similar clues to the natural economy. When the beneficial aspects of nature are counted, nature’s contributions to welfare can be much better described.
Nature offers plenty of features to count. Indeed, this abundance is part of the problem.
To date, ecology, environmental economics, and the growing field of green accounting have
failed to provide adequate guidance on what in nature should be counted as defensible measures of nature’s services. This imprecision is a result of the failure to use ecological and economic theory to define services.
Terminology is a big part of the problem. Ecology and economics talk about ecosystem
components, processes, functions, and services—and often in different ways. An important
first step toward practical welfare accounting units is concrete guidance on what to count
and why. To account for nature’s benefits, the most important definition is that of ecosystem
services. They are the appropriate units of account.
What Are Ecosystem Services?
The term “services” originates in economics but has been adopted in ecology to signify the
connection between ecosystems and human well-being. Ecosystem services arise from—and
depend on—the broader sets of ecological components, processes, and functions but are different: they are the aspects of the ecosystem that society uses, consumes, or enjoys to experience those benefits. Five principles guide the definition.
First, services are nature’s end products, not everything in nature. When GDP is measured, it counts cars, not tires, the factory, the workers, leather, paint, or steel (although those
things are counted in other kinds of national accounts). Why is this? Because the value of
the car embodies the value of all its inputs. If we counted and valued the individual inputs, we
would be double-counting their value. Similarly, we needn’t count everything in nature. We
only have to count what matters directly to people.
The second principle, that ecosystem services are benefit-specific, flows from the first. For
example, a given natural characteristic can simultaneously be an end product and an intermediate product. Accordingly, that characteristic can simultaneously be counted and not
counted by green GDP. For example, wetlands should be counted as services associated with
flood protection because they directly protect against floods and are substitutes for constructed flood control. However, wetlands should not be counted as services for the water
quality benefits they provide. The water quality itself should be counted because that is what
people directly value. To be clear: the wetland is valuable in both cases but only needs to be
counted in one.
Similarly, units of tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and ground beef are counted by GDP if sold
in stores as final products; they are not counted when combined and sold together on a bun
as a restaurant hamburger.
SUMMER 2006
Wetlands should not
be counted as
services for the
water quality benefits
they provide—the
water quality itself
should be counted
because that is what
people directly value.
Similarly, tomatoes,
onions, lettuce, and
ground beef are
counted as GDP if
sold in stores as final
products, but they
are not counted when
combined and
sold together on a
bun as a hamburger.
7
The third principle is a practical one. GDP’s dirty little secret is that it counts what we can
count, not what we should count. Consider again a car. GDP counts cars because they are
things and therefore easy to count. Perhaps what we should count is “the satisfaction or utility of owning a car” or “sex appeal.” But this is impractical. To place ecosystem services on an
equal footing with market goods, we need to count things that can be practically measured
and that have concrete meaning to people.
Fourth, ecosystem services should be ecological. This sounds obvious but reflects another
terminology issue. Economists and others will often say, “Recreation is an ecosystem service.”
But recreation is more properly thought of as a benefit that arises when people combine inputs, including time, human resources (skill), capital (equipment such as boats, boots, and
binoculars), and things in nature. Ecosystem services are the things in nature that make
recreation possible or pleasurable, not the recreation itself. Once ecosystem services are combined with other inputs, such as human resources and capital, they cease to be identifiably
ecological.
Finally, ecosystem services should be counted with the greatest possible spatial and temporal resolution. Individuals benefit from water quality and availability in particular places
at particular times. To say that a trillion acre-feet of clean water are available nationally every
year is meaningless. What matters is where and when the water is available. For example, the
value of water for recreation depends largely on where that water is, in a scenic canyon or an
irrigation canal. And clearly, the timing of water flows is crucial for irrigation, drinking water, and recreation.
Boyd said. Reporting anecdotes and success stories is no longer enough for donors who want to
In late May, a workshop at RFF drew nearly three
see evidence of a return on their investment, said
dozen experts from federal agencies, major enone participant. The same holds true for governvironmental and conservation NGOs, and acament trustees of nature. Are their decisions imdemia to discuss an idea vital to environmenproving our well-being or not?
tal progress: practical ways to count nature’s
Some participants felt that the demand for difbenefits.
ferent kinds of information makes standardization
“All the environmental laws in the world won’t
impractical. Metrics need to emerge from where
matter if we can’t measure what we’ve achieved—
decisions are made: “who is at the negotiating
LY N N S C A R L E T T
or failed to achieve,” said RFF Senior Fellow
table is what matters,” said one participant.
James Boyd, who organized the workshop. “Nature presents us with
Then-acting Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett kicked off the workshop
an infinite number of things to count. Without principles to guide what by reminding the participants to pay close attention to semantics and
should be counted, the result can be chaos, confusion, and paralysis. context as they deliberated.
The public needs a clearer way to keep track of gains and losses in the
Economists have been using all manner of tools, such as contingent
benefits we receive from nature.”
valuation to find, check, and calculate environmental benefits, Scarlett
Participants debated alternatives and the desirability of standardiz- said. “But I’m a little worried that value outside of the context of actual
ing environmental accounting practices. The workshop, funded by bidding in the marketplace is acutely subject to the assumptions used.”
EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, represents an outHowever, three things are certain, she said. First, the effects of engrowth of Boyd’s work on practical measurement of ecosystem serv- vironmental transformations are not always, or even perhaps often well
ices, which encompass the benefits of nature to households, commu- considered in decisions. Second, the benefits from drawing upon nanities, and economies. It was held off the record to encourage a free ture’s capital in investment and policy choices, and private decisions,
exchange of ideas and concerns about challenges at the participants’ are still frequently overlooked. And third, “the results of our environrespective agencies and organizations.
mental policy actions are too often neglected, as success is measured
“Our ultimate goal is to provide a standardized definition and meas- only by the processes we have in place rather than the actual outcomes
ures of ecosystem services that facilitate performance assessment,” achieved.”
Standardizing What We Count
8
RESOURCES
This perspective differs from that expressed in the Handbook of National Accounting, which
states that “it is not generally the components of ecosystems that benefit humans, but the systems as a whole.” Surely, the entire system is necessary, but so is the entire conventional market system. We only get at the value of the system, however, by counting its components. Aggregation can be meaningful only if it is “built up” from spatially and temporally distinct units.
Role of Ecology
For decades, economists and ecologists have sought a consistent point of contact between
their analytical realms. As defined above, ecosystem services provide this link. Economics has
dominion over what should be counted if one wants to measure the benefits of nature. But
ecology has dominion over the study of changes in services over time.
If one measures nature’s value at only one point in time, then a great deal of ecological
sophistication is not needed. One simply counts observable features, such as air, soil, water
quality, land cover types, and species populations. As envisioned here, green GDP also allows
period-to-period comparison of the quantity of ecosystem services over time (for example,
has a particular government presided over an increase or decrease in ecosystem services?).
Degradation or enhancement of services can be directly measured and reflected in the year’s
green GDP numbers.
However, green GDP can—and should—aspire to more than this. In particular, it can be
used to assess welfare losses arising from overconsumption—that is, borrowing from the future to consume today.
Consider two human activities: commercial fishing and energy production. Both generate consumption (seafood and energy, respectively) that is reflected in GDP as a positive contribution to welfare. One reason to calculate green GDP is to reveal the effect of current consumption on future well-being. Unfortunately, economists have little ability to make such
predictions in the ecological realm. If green GDP is to incorporate adjustments for resource
depletion—and it should—then only biophysical science will be capable of substantiating
those adjustments.
To say that a trillion
acre-feet of clean
water are available
nationally every
year is meaningless.
What matters is
where and when the
water is available.
Conclusion: A Note about Prices
What about prices, the other core aspect of a welfare index? By their very nature, environmental public goods lack the prices that are used to weight outputs in GDP. Indeed, the problem of missing prices spawned and continues to occupy an entire field of economics. It has
also led many environmental accounting advocates to despair. To be sure, attaching weights
(virtual prices) to environmental public goods is a significant challenge. But a more significant
hurdle is deriving those weights without the benefit of consistently defined units of account.
Defining units is a crucial step that environmental economists have largely neglected.
For several reasons, then, welfare-based accounting for environmental goods must begin
with defensible definitions of the units to be counted. First, keeping track of these units (without prices) yields useful information. It is better to know how many cars and trucks are produced each year than to not know at all. The same is true for environmental public goods.
Second, the missing price problem can be systematically addressed only if the units to which
virtual prices are attached are consistently defined. Third, assigning prices to nature is controversial for philosophical and political reasons. Focusing on the quantities part of the problem avoids distraction by those debates and resistance to “putting price tags on nature.” If
green GDP is to be fully realized, then the price debates cannot be avoided forever. But they
can be avoided for a while, as counting begins. ■
SUMMER 2006
9
Up
Swimming
THE CHALLENGES OF MANAGING
THE WORLD’S FISHERIES
An interview with James N. Sanchirico
isheries—organized efforts to harvest fish and other
aquatic species—make up one of the world’s oldest enterprises and have played important roles in food production and cultural identity throughout history. Today, marine species and the people who derive their livelihoods from fishing are at a crossroads, as
fisheries face threats from overharvesing, land-based pollution, aquaculture, and climate change. By some accounts, overfishing alone affects about one-third of the U.S. fish populations that scientists have
assessed.
The United States is considering proposals to overhaul its fisheries
policy under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management and Conservation Act, which is more than six years overdue for reauthorization. Getting it wrong will maintain the status quo of stressed ecosystems and the depressed livelihoods of all those dependent on it. At this
critical juncture, Resources sat down with RFF Senior Fellow James
Sanchirico, an expert on the economics of fisheries, to glean insights
into how fisheries are managed and what might be done to improve
their future.
Then we started to realize that they’re not, that humans affect fish populations adversely. So we began to think about
managing fisheries—and began to realize that geography
and species needed to be taken into account. Management
of the grouper and snapper fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico
would need to be very different from management of the cod
fisheries off New England and the salmon fisheries in the
Northwest, for example.
As a result, when fishery management was getting started
in the United States around the mid-1970s, it was set up with
a regional perspective. We now have eight regional fishery
management councils that decide how many fish can be
caught each year, who can catch them, and what particular
gear can be used. Each council is comprised mainly of commercial and sportfishing members nominated by the state
governors within a particular council area and selected by the
secretary of commerce. Councils also include representatives
from the fish and game offices, the National Marine Fisheries
service, and, in the Pacific region, Native American tribes.
Once fisheries management plans are devised for particular species at the regional councils, they go to the Department of Commerce, where the commerce secretary evaluates them against a set of nine standards put forth in the
Magnuson-Stevens Act.
Resources: As consumers, we’re told every so often that another fish species is being overharvested and that we should
avoid eating it. How is commercial fishing regulated in the
United States?
It wasn’t too long ago that we didn’t manage fisheries at all.
Instead, we thought of the seas as an inexhaustible resource.
Resources: Why has it been so hard to reauthorize MagnusonStevens? Unlike last year’s Energy Bill, which also took many
years to come to fruition, no multinational corporations are
involved, and Americans certainly are not addicted to fish.
Reauthorization of the act has been pending for more than
six years now. There are four plausible explanations. First,
F
10
RESOURCES
stream
fishery management is just not at the forefront of our political debates, partially because a fair number of senators and
congressmen are not from coastal states. It also hasn’t risen
yet at a national level as an issue of concern. Although people understand that we’re overfishing, they go to the beach
or recreationally fish from a charter boat, and everything
looks fine, so it’s hard to make that connection.
Second, we’re trying to manage 256 major fish stocks in
the United States, on top of three or four hundred others
that aren’t major in terms of their catch totals. And not only
are fisheries diverse across ecology and biology but also
across socioeconomic dimensions.
Large commercial operations are vertically integrated.
They have boats that catch the fish and sometimes do the
processing on board, or they bring it to an onshore processor owned by their company. The company might own seven
or eight vessels. Some of these operations are even part of
large food conglomerates and have a bottom line to meet for
shareholders.
In comparison, think of the opposite extreme: third- or
fourth-generation Portuguese or Italian fishermen in New
England and other parts of the country, where the culture of
fishing is embedded in their identities. I’m sure you can find
individuals who aren’t interested in making a dime, or at
least will say that they’re not. To them what is important is
that they can fish when they want, where they want; some of
them don’t want to be regulated at all. To try to come up with
an overarching regulatory framework that can encompass
that broad spectrum is not an easy task.
Third, other countries that have overhauled their fisheries
management policies have had a strong impetus to do so. For
example, New Zealand had a “perfect storm” in the early
1980s, and some very important fish stocks collapsed. This
caused a crisis, around which a constituency formed. In Iceland, which also has rationalized its fishery management,
fisheries at one point made up about 45 percent of its gross
domestic product (GDP). So there, fisheries are a dominant
issue. None of these catalysts exist in the United States,
where fisheries make up far less than 1 percent of the GDP.
SUMMER 2006
Although people
understand that we’re
overfishing, they
go to the beach or
recreationally fish
from a charter boat,
and everything
looks fine, so it’s
hard to make that
connection.
Finally, reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens bill is
getting hung up on several sticking points. For instance, how
do we design rebuilding plans; what kind of standards should
we put in place? Typically it’s now legislated that unless certain exemptions are met—for instance, the fish population is
very slow growing—fisheries have to rebuild collapsed fish
stocks within a 10-year horizon. A bill put forth by Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA) would relax this 10-year requirement, a motion that has some environmental groups up
in arms because they think that doing so allows more overfishing. Ongoing research at RFF, however, shows that it is not
clear that more flexibility in the 10-year horizon will allow
overfishing. What we are finding is that the time horizon for
an economically efficient rebuilding plan depends on the
catch rate, rebuilding target, initial fish population, and
other important biological and economic factors. Where that
falls relative to 10 years is not clear.
Another sticking point is the issue of whether and how to
allow for rationalization of fisheries through individual fishing quotas (IFQs) and development of cooperatives. The current debate also focuses on whether we should give processors quotas, a very contentious issue that has held up the
entire debate on rationalization. Under a quota system,
processors would be given the right to the amount of fish
that are caught to guarantee they will be supplied a certain
amount of fish every year.
Resources: The marketplace for fish is global, just as it is for
oil. Can you talk about the interplay between U.S. fishery
policy and the actions of other nations competing for the
same fish?
While some fish stocks reside within the U.S. exclusive economic zone (the waters within 200 nautical miles of a state’s
coastline), some fisheries straddle countries. For example,
the salmon in Alaska and Washington swim through Canadian waters. This raises issues of coordination. How do you
determine the total catch and then allocate it? Which countries are going to catch what? And how do you monitor that
within the country?
Then there are stocks that reside in international waters.
These include very valuable bluefin tuna stocks, and other
highly valuable pelagic fish that move across large expanses
of the ocean. And they’re very difficult to manage, because
although commissions are set up that have representatives
from many different governments, they often don’t have
much power behind them. Chilean sea bass—Patagonian
toothfish—is an example of the difficulties of managing
fisheries in international waters. The toothfish was overharvested very quickly because of a lack of coordinated management and enforcement. But it is not clear how to monitor
and enforce out in the open ocean.
The global nature of the marketplace also gives rise to
competition, sometimes to the benefit of the sea, and sometimes to its detriment. For example, Japan is a large consumer of fish, and many fishers compete for that market. But
one of the nice things about competing in the Japanese market is that it’s mainly based on quality. Typically, when you’re
fishing for quality, you’re minimizing other impacts because
you’re not necessarily taking large nets through areas.
Other potentially competitive areas include particular
species that are both raised by aquaculture and caught in the
wild. Salmon is a good example. Because the market is being
The global nature of the marketplace gives
rise to competition, sometimes to the benefit of the
sea, and sometimes to its detriment.
flooded with farm-raised salmon from countries such as
Chile, Iceland, and Norway, the price of wild-caught salmon
is generally lower than it would be in the absence of its farmraised competitor. Fishers in Alaska try to get around this by
marketing their fish as more sustainable and “organic” than
the farm-raised fish. But, in general, lower prices translate
into less fishing pressure.
are restricted by quotas. Some have done very well under the
current management system, and they’re afraid that under a
new management system they might not do as well.
If you talk to fishermen who have done this, for example,
in New Zealand, they initially experienced the same anxiety.
But years later, they really see the benefits, and today it’s hard
for them to think about not having these systems in place.
Resources: What is the biggest threat to fish stocks?
That’s a very hard question to answer because a lot of things
affect them, including destruction of
habitat and issues of runoff and pollution. However, possibly the largest threat
to fish stocks is that so many fisheries are
still operating as if they are unmanaged.
What I mean is that management focuses
too much on treating the symptoms and
not enough on the causes of overfishing,
which are the perverse incentives that
the fishermen face. Because fishermen
don’t own the fish until they’re onboard
their boats, a race to fish arises.
Here’s a classic example: In the Alaskan
halibut fishery, regulators closed the
fishing season down when the fishermen
caught the target amount for the year.
Over time, the fishermen started investing in faster boats because they wanted to catch as much as possible before the season was closed. But that resulted in shorter and shorter seasons, until all the halibut ended up being caught in two
24-hour periods. The race to fish still occurs in places like the
Gulf of Mexico, where the snapper fishery has “derby
fisheries.” This is a serious threat to fish stocks that we can do
something right now about.
Resources: Earlier you said that we need to regulate each fishery differently, but then you just said that we need to address
incentives through the use of IFQs or cooperatives. Is there an inconsistency
here?
Good question. No, there is not an inconsistency. You are right that the impetus for regional fishery management was
the fact that managing different species
requires different tools. This perspective
is a consequence of focusing your management on regulating fishing gear and
controlling every aspect of fishing activities. But we also know that the need to address incentives is universal. And it does
not depend on whether you are talking
about a coral reef fish, sea urchins, pelagics, or groundfish. Places like Iceland and
New Zealand have realized this and have applied IFQs to a
very broad spectrum of fisheries.
James Sanchirico
Resources: Can IFQs solve this problem?
IFQs would be one way to offset this race. With IFQs, individual fishermen are allocated a share in the total allowable catch
that’s determined in a given year. It’s a privilege to have that
right, and sometimes trading is allowed. So if a fisher doesn’t
want to fish in a given year, or if he wants to leave fishing, he
can trade out his rights for that year to somebody else.
IFQs have worked very well in places such as New Zealand,
Iceland, and Alaska. In terms of adopting them on a fuller
scale in the United States, it’s up to the regional councils and
is typically applied to one species at a time. Some support
IFQs and some don’t, because they change the whole fishing
culture. With IFQs, fishers can no longer go out and catch as
much as they want, or get that extra large catch. Instead, they
SUMMER 2006
Resources: What else on the horizon could bring about change?
There are a couple of things. There is currently legislation
on setting up national standards for offshore aquaculture operations. With safeguards in place, moving aquaculture offshore can remove some of the current impediments to more
large-scale operations in the United States, such as visual
blights and some pollution issues in bays.
Fishers also are watching the organic market in agriculture
to understand how to develop their markets. A Marine Stewardship Council has formed to certify and label fisheries as
sustainable. The Alaskan salmon fishery, for example, is now
certified. Their hope is to charge a price premium for their
product, much like organic agriculture.
This could lead to a positive feedback loop: If demand is
developed for more sustainable fishery products, certification
programs can arise. Fishers in turn will want to certify their
fisheries, which means that they’ll be more inclined to keep
the stock at healthy levels and engage in activities that have
less spillover impact on the habitat. It is still too early to tell,
however, how these demand-side programs will fare. ■
13
“Ground Truthing” Policy
Using Participatory Map-Making to Connect Citizens and Decision Makers
Shalini P. Vajjhala
C
itizen participation has become an increasingly important component of
development planning and environmental decision-making worldwide.
Stakeholders are becoming more and
more effective at derailing projects
that are not perceived as responsive
to local concerns and needs—one
notorious example is the ongoing controversy over siting
wind power off Nantucket Sound. If a planning process isn’t
seen as transparent, citizens are likely to oppose a project,
regardless of its actual costs or benefits. As a result, encouraging public participation has become a high priority for
funding institutions, government agencies, planners, and
politicians in recent years.
Although new approaches to advance citizen engagement
have emerged, participants still typically represent only a
small subset of the larger affected population. As a result,
the success of new projects increasingly depends on effective
communication of participatory efforts and their results to
a wider public. Within this broad agenda, reasons for seeking greater public involvement include raising awareness, incorporating public values, improving decisions, and building consensus.
One increasingly common way of engaging citizens and
communities is to use mapping and spatial information technologies, such as geographic information systems (GIS).
Mapping in this context refers broadly to any method used
to elicit and record spatial data. Examples range from handdrawn sketches to group chalk drawings to community “3D”
physical and computer models. In all of these cases, mapping
comprises not just a set of tools but the participatory process
of gathering spatial information and making maps.
Map-making has become more popular with the growing
recognition that many development and environment-re-
14
lated projects are inherently based on spatial information:
the locations of key resources, people, and problems are central to the decisions being made. But little attention has been
paid to whether maps are effective for eliciting information
about peoples’ priorities, perceptions, and preferences—and
then communicating this information to wider audiences.
To address this gap, I worked with colleagues at Carnegie
Mellon University to design and conduct a series of mapping
surveys and interviews to evaluate if and how mapping can
be used to facilitate public participation in development
planning and environmental decision-making. In the remote-sensing field, the term “ground truthing” is used to describe the process of verifying a satellite image with what is
already known about the location on the ground. We set out
to do the same here, working with hand-drawn maps instead
of pictures from space to verify local perceptions and contexts.
The first part of this study involved interviewing individuals and having them draw maps of their communities and environments. We then integrated their “data” (the location of
homes, businesses, parks, significant places, etc.) into a standard GIS database and developed digital versions of each individual participatory map for evaluation by different audiences and groups. In the final stage, we looked to see if and
how versions of these maps are understood by individuals
who are not familiar with either the map-making process or
the area being mapped. Reaching a wider public requires
both direct participants (map makers) and indirect participants (map viewers)—this study evaluates both groups.
Public Participation in Pittsburgh
Our study group was made up of 32 individuals from several
neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In one-on-one interviews, we asked participants to create maps of how they
RESOURCES
perceived their community. Using colored markers on 18" ×
24" pieces of paper, each began by drawing a symbol for his
or her home at the center of the page and continued by
adding frequent routes and destinations in response to a sequence of interview questions. Symbols were selected by each
mapmaker to best represent and communicate his or her personal associations with different types of places. Participants
then added landmarks, places of special significance, and
positive and negative spaces on their maps. Map features and
symbols were not limited to physical spaces, but also marked
local issues, community benefits, and areas of concerns. For
example, various participants’ maps included symbols for attributes such as diversity, crime, the rising price of public
transportation, abandoned housing, accessibility, and “walkability.” Throughout the interview, map makers added information to their maps to describe their activities, their interests, and their perceptions of their communities.
Figure 1 is an example of the type of map generated using
this process. The colors on the map are associated with different categories of questions: black represents general activities and destinations, blue indicates places of special
significance, orange illustrates descriptive landmarks or locally important markers, red defines any negative places or
areas, and green marks positive spaces or things participants
would like to change.
As a final step in the mapping interview, participants were
asked to draw a red line around all the places that they felt
were part of their community. Results of the study show that
not only does the geographic definition of community vary
among community members, but the perceived boundaries do
not correspond with typical, artificial boundaries such as zip
codes, census tracts, or other superimposed divisions. Given
that individuals’ definitions of community and stakeholders’
needs for information vary so drastically, communicating with
a broad audience requires an acknowledgment of their diverse
frames of reference in order to make new development decisions locally relevant, understood, and accepted.
Integrating Mapping Methods
The next part of our study focused on integrating these maps
into GIS to bring together the myriad types of information
Figure 1.
Participatory map made
by a female resident of
an urban neighborhood
in Pittsburgh.
SUMMER 2006
15
Figure 2.
Right: A digital version of
a participatory map by a
male resident of a lowincome neighborhood with
standardized symbols at
their original scale.
Figure 3.
Below: A scaled GIS version
of the participatory map,
from Figure 2 above, with
standard symbols at their
actual locations.
16
RESOURCES
required for effective participatory decision-making. During
the process of drawing their maps, individuals provided street
addresses and estimated distances to key points. These addresses were then matched with existing citywide GIS data
points, and the locations of other elements were extrapolated
and added to the GIS based on supporting data. Symbols
were scanned into a GIS library as standardized, hand-drawn
images (like those on the legend on page 18) and were assigned to the appropriate locations on each map.
Given the diversity of stakeholders in many development
and environmental projects, different groups frequently require common information about a project but understand
and use this information very differently from one another.
For example, planners involved in siting major energy facilities require detailed technical information about possible
sites including soil types, tree heights, and other relevant environmental data, while residents are often more generally
interested in how a new project might impact their communities and landscape views. Both groups require common information about the same project, but displayed at very different scales and levels of detail.
To evaluate ways of combining and displaying information
in GIS that address the varying information needs of different stakeholders, participants’ original maps were used to create several types of maps in GIS. Two versions of these maps
are illustrated on page 16. Figure 2 shows a digital version of
a participatory map, and Figure 3 is an accurately scaled GIS
version of this same map using standard symbols. The personal digital map is the most similar to the individual handdrawn map and is simply a graphic recreation of the original
with standardized symbols at a proportionate scale. As Figure
1 illustrates, respondents’ maps were often clear, but rough;
therefore, all symbols were redrawn, standardized, and then
loaded into GIS. Using this framework, a graphic version of
the original map with all of the original destinations and
routes was created using the new standard symbols (Figure
2). Finally, spatially accurate GIS maps were developed by referencing points on the digital maps to correspond with the
actual locations of places to generate new maps at different
scales (see Figure 3 for an example).
Evaluating Survey Findings
The final phase of this project tested how various versions of
participatory and GIS maps are understood by different
groups to evaluate each map’s effectiveness and accuracy for
communicating both the actual neighborhood characteristics as well as the original map makers’ perceptions. A written survey was conducted with volunteers from community
SUMMER 2006
organizations in a town near Pittsburgh. This study area was
specifically selected for its relative geographic isolation, in order to work with a survey population that was largely unfamiliar with both the specific neighborhoods mapped in the
survey and the process of map-making. Surveys were administered to groups of 15 to 50 volunteers in three moderated
sessions. One hundred eleven participants were randomly assigned to receive a written survey booklet with maps representing either of two urban neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, one
low income, and the other high income.
GIS versions of the hand-drawn maps described above
from four neighborhood residents and a single city-data
based GIS map of the same area were collected into two separate survey booklets, one representing each neighborhood.
The five maps in each booklet were cropped to describe a
common 2 × 2-mile square area to allow for direct comparisons across maps. We asked a series of questions to test individual understanding of each map, the map makers, and the
two neighborhoods. We specifically designed the survey booklets around sets of repeated questions to measure differences
between the standard GIS and participatory GIS maps, between selected map makers, and across neighborhoods to
evaluate which maps and map makers were most effective at
communicating information about each neighborhood.
Major Results
A large majority of respondents correctly interpreted and answered basic symbol and scale-comprehension questions for
both standard GIS and participatory digital maps. The ability of respondents to interpret symbols and scales was not
significantly different for the standard GIS maps than for any
of the participatory maps. Interestingly, those respondents
who answered basic symbol and scale questions incorrectly
were still able to provide relatively accurate assessments and
ratings of the neighborhoods described by the participatory
maps and different map makers’ perceptions.
The most significant findings from the survey are the result of comparisons of survey respondents’ ratings with those
of the original map makers for a set of community attributes.
Respondents were asked to assess the neighborhood represented in their booklet and to give their own ratings on a
scale of 1–5 after viewing only the GIS map and then after
viewing all five maps.
After viewing GIS maps, individuals gave overall ratings
that were not significantly different for the two very different communities. After viewing all four digital participatory
maps in their booklets, however, respondents’ overall neighborhood ratings shifted significantly in the direction of the
17
original map makers’ own community ratings. Participants
who evaluated the low-income neighborhood on average adjusted their ratings downward and moved toward the actual
ratings of community residents and the original map makers. Similarly, respondents who viewed maps of the highincome neighborhood shifted their ratings upward to reflect a more positive impression of the community that also
aligned with the ratings of that community’s residents and
map makers.
This change in perceptions and neighborhood evaluations
clearly illustrates that the digital participatory maps not only
communicate additional information over the standard GIS
maps, but they also convey accurate information about the
original map makers’ perceptions of their neighborhoods.
Comparisons of these before-and-after neighborhood ratings
provide strong support for mapping as a medium for accurately eliciting and communicating the perceptions of community map makers to wider audiences.
Conclusions
What our results show is that respondents clearly understood
what different maps depicted and had a strong preference
for how community map makers represented their commu-
nities, over standard GIS maps. By thoroughly testing and
evaluating how idiosyncratic symbols drawn by individuals
could be translated into stable, replicable data, we were able
to address the question of just how well participatory maps
could work as a policy tool.
While we focused on individuals in urban neighborhoods,
participatory mapping is widely used for more general projects with communities and groups around the world. Examples include studies of how villagers in the Philippines define
local forests and watersheds, how residents of informal communities in India can plan for resettlement, and spatial evaluations of the critical differences in how access and mo bility patterns between men and women in rural southern
Africa vary.
Like all participation strategies, mapping methods have to
be tailored to local settings and issues. However, the results
of this study and the process of integrating participatory maps
and GIS maps used here are relevant in a wide variety of projects where the goal is to bring together information on local
perceptions and planned developments for effective communication with wider audiences. Overall, participatory mapping in combination with GIS can help planners and policy
makers “ground truth” new projects in both local realities
and perceptions. ■
Figure 4.
A sample of the standardized symbols and icons
identified by a participant
and used as the legend
in a symbol comprehension
test of both participatory
and GIS maps.
18
RESOURCES
The Role of
Forest Sinks in a Post-Kyoto
World
By Roger A. Sedjo and
Masahiro Amano
oday, most scientists, as well as the Bush administration, agree that global warming is indeed occurring and that it is a significant problem. The question of the efficacy of the Kyoto Protocol as a
remedy, however, is another story. While some European countries are on schedule to meet their emissions
targets, others are not. Two of the largest carbon emitters,
China and India, are not even required to comply—they
have no carbon targets. Two others, the United States and
Australia, have chosen not to ratify the protocol, and now
Canada, which did ratify, has announced that it does not expect to comply. But even if all the global Kyoto Protocol targets are met, the global temperature in the year 2100 will be
only about 0.3°C lower than “business as usual,” because
just 7–10 percent of the expected temperature rise would be
prevented if the Kyoto targets were met.
As the first compliance period (2008–2012) approaches,
analysts and policymakers around the world are considering
how to evaluate the protocol’s effectiveness and anticipating
what a post-Kyoto world will look like. Criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol are many, centering on the high cost of compliance and the lack of flexibility. There is widespread recognition that continuing the Kyoto process without the
involvement of China, India, Brazil, and other major countries of the developing world would not only ensure that the
United States will not participate in the future but would be
fundamentally futile for meeting long-term targets because
of the dominant place these countries have as emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
While the diplomats continue to wrangle over emissions
targets, compliance, and monitoring, one abatement tool deserves greater attention. Forest sinks hold enormous potential as one of the most efficient, low-cost ways to capture or
T
19
Forest sinks hold enormous
potential as one of the most
efficient, low-cost ways to
capture or sequester carbon.
sequester atmospheric carbon. For example, a 2006 study organized by the Energy Modeling Forum of Stanford University found that using biological sequestration can reduce the
costs of meeting certain 2100 climate objectives from 3.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) to 2.3 percent,
which amounts to literally trillions of dollars. And according
to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), up to 20 percent of excessive emissions can be captured in forests and biological
sinks over the next 50 years. The Kyoto Protocol as it now
stands does not take fully into account several opportunities
for biological sequestration. But what role could forest sinks
play in a post-2012 world?
Global Carbon Sinks: Some Basic Concepts
Global carbon is held in a variety of different “stocks.” Natural stocks include oceans, fossil-fuel deposits, the terrestrial
system, and the atmosphere. In the terrestrial system, carbon
is sequestered in rocks and sediments; in swamps, wetlands,
and forests; and in the soils of forests, grasslands, and farmland. About two-thirds of the globe’s terrestrial carbon, exclusive of that sequestered in rocks and sediments, is sequestered in the standing forests, forest understory plants,
leaf and forest debris, and forest soils. In addition, there are
20
some nonnatural stocks, such as long-lived wood products
(typically wood construction and furniture) and waste dumps
that constitute a separate, human-created carbon stock.
A stock that is taking up carbon is called a “sink” and one
that is releasing carbon is called a “source.” Shifts or flows of
carbon over time from one stock to another—from the atmosphere to the forest, for example—are viewed as carbon
“fluxes.” Over time, carbon may be transferred from one
stock to another. Fossil-fuel burning, for example, shifts carbon from fossil-fuel deposits to the atmospheric stock. Biological growth involves the shifting of carbon from one stock
to another; for example, plants fix atmospheric carbon in cell
tissues as they grow, thereby transforming carbon from the
atmosphere to the biotic system.
Five pools of carbon are involved in a forest ecosystem:
above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, litter, dead
wood, and organic carbon in soil. Carbon is sequestered in
the process of plant growth: it is captured in plant cell formation and oxygen is released. As the forest biomass experiences growth, the carbon held captive in the forest stock increases. Simultaneously, plants grow on the forest floor and
add to this carbon store. Over time, branches, leaves, and
other materials fall to the forest floor and may store carbon
until they decompose. Additionally, forest soils may sequester
some of the decomposing plant litter through root-soil interactions. Carbon may also be sequestered for long periods
in long-lived wood products resulting from forest harvests.
Forests in Transition
Forests are constantly in transition, being cleared for agriculture and often subsequently replanted or abandoned
and left to grow in, for example. The Kyoto Protocol accounts
for this in Article 3.3, which calls for the maintenance of
forests by afforestation, reforestation, and controlling deforestation (ARD).
Deforestation occurs when forestland is cleared and reforestation does not take place. Commonly, land clearing is
associated with the permanent conversion of forestlands to
other uses, such as croplands, pasture, or development. When
forestland is converted to some other use, there is a net loss
of carbon in the terrestrial stock since most other land uses
will sequester less carbon than the forest. Under these circumstances, net carbon transfers occur. If the site is cleared
and the vegetation burned, most of the carbon is released
into the atmosphere. However, to the extent that the vegetation is converted into long-lived wood products or substituted
for fossil-fuel energy, only a portion of the carbon in the forest will be a net release into the atmosphere.
RESOURCES
The creation of a forest on land never forested or not
forested for a very long time is called afforestation. Often the
distinction between afforestation and reforestation blurs as
the period during which the forest has been absent from the
land lengthens. Afforestation occurs when forests are established on grasslands never previously forested. It also may be
said to occur as lands once in forests but which have been in
agriculture for long periods of time, as in parts of the U.S.
South, are converted into forests, due to either natural
processes or tree planting. On afforested lands, the additional carbon stored in trees and other components of the
forest ecosystem constitutes a net addition to the terrestrial
forest stock.
Forest Sequestration and the Kyoto Protocol
Historically, humans have contributed to carbon dioxide
emissions in two ways: by burning fossil-fuels and converting
forestlands to other uses. Initially, land-use changes (deforestation) were the principle source of carbon emissions. However, starting in the 20th century, fossil-fuel emissions rose
rapidly, while emissions due to deforestation gradually declined. One way to begin to address the issue of increasing
carbon emissions is to maintain and increase the stock of sustainably managed forests.
Although it is well known that the world’s tropical forests
are declining, it is less widely recognized that the world’s temperate and boreal forests have been expanding. Recent UN
Food and Agricultural Organization estimates indicate a net
global deforestation rate—that is, the conversion of forestland
to other uses—for 2000 through 2005 of 7.3 million hectare
(ha) per year. This is a reduction from the 8.9-million-acre net
annual deforestation of the 1990 to 2000 period, when deforestation of natural forests at 14.1 million ha per year was partially offset by an afforestation rate of 5.2 million ha per year.
So, while the tropical forest carbon stock has become smaller,
the temperate and boreal forests have been expanding.
The Kyoto Protocol recognizes the efficacy of forests and
sustainable management as a vehicle for addressing climate
change in Article 2, which states that each party in Annex 1
(major industrialized nations) shall establish or expand policies and measures that promote sustainable forest management practices. Additionally, according to Article 3.3, afforestation and reforestation credits are obtained, while
deforestation is associated with debits. Article 3.4 provides
credits for increases in the carbon sequestered by forest management.
But the protocol fails to take full advantage of the potential of forest sinks. Looking toward a post-Kyoto world, how
might the role of forest sequestration be expanded to more
fully address climate change?
Several northern countries—including France, Portugal,
Japan, China, some Eastern European countries, and the
United States that are experiencing positive net biological
growth—have a wide interpretation of forest management
and of forests that are eligible for credits. Although these
forests are sequestering large amounts of carbon, much of
this would probably occur without a carbon program. The
question is how much of the additional carbon reasonably
can be viewed as additive, in the sense that they would not
have occurred under business as usual.
Under Kyoto, European Union countries were given credit
for 15 percent of the net growth of their managed forests, with
no credits or debits associated with unmanaged forests. This
approach assumes that active management is responsible for
15 percent of the incremental addition in forest growth. However, exceptions—based on political, not scientific, considerations—providing for larger amounts of credit were negotiated for some countries, such as Russia. A question for a
future agreement is how much sequestration would be allowed for various countries from forest management.
21
In addition, as it now stands, the protocol does not give
credit for protecting existing forests, although loss of forests
can generate debits for countries with carbon targets. This issue becomes more complex if the countries without carbon
targets undertake sequestration programs, as with the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM), in cooperation with industrial countries. Furthermore, if the current system were
applied to the next compliance period, these countries could
incur carbon debits for forest losses that might occur beyond
a base period yet to be determined.
One approach for initially involving tropical countries
might be to allow them positive carbon credits for reducing
their rates of deforestation below a baseline level. The baseline could be constructed by using the estimate of the forest
and its carbon at some time point. Alternatively, a baseline
trend might be constructed by projecting the forest carbon
through time. Credits could be provided for amounts sequestered in excess of baseline levels. Care must be taken,
however, in establishing the baseline. The smaller the area involved, the larger the likely “leakage,” that is, the shifting of
emissions out of one geographical area and into another.
When this happens, credits are obtained for emissions reductions in the one area, while emissions increases that occur simultaneously in another area do not receive debits.
The real solution is to be
found in a mix of adaptive actions,
as well as a host of new
emissions-reducing technologies
that are being developed today.
A related approach would be to provide carbon credits for
acceptable restoration for forests deemed degraded. This
wider perspective could generate social benefits, both through
carbon mitigation and through other social and environmental benefits associated with forests, such as habitat conservation.
Another element that needs further consideration is the
treatment of carbon in wood products like buildings and furniture. The current assumption is that once a tree is harvested, all of its carbon is released. This approach assumes
that the net stock of carbon in long-lived wood products is
unchanging. In fact, about one-half of the harvested industrial wood goes into wooden products that are in use for extended periods, and so the carbon remains captive for years,
decades, and even centuries. Credit could be given for the sequestration of this carbon. However, it must be recognized
that while new wood materials are being added to the stock
of wood products, the stock also is experiencing releases as
wood decomposes, is burned, or otherwise releases carbon.
Adaptive Action
Although consensus grows that the Kyoto Protocol suffers
from a number of defects, the bright spot is that the global
community can learn a great deal from the Kyoto experiment. A major lesson is that an approach that is hugely expensive but generates small climate benefits is unlikely to satisfactorily resolve the problem of global climate change. The
real solution is to be found in a mix of adaptive actions, as
well as a host of new emissions-reducing technologies that are
being developed today.
Sustainable forestry management is one such approach
that can sequester a substantial portion of the surplus carbon
in the atmosphere—at a much lower cost than other carbonreducing actions. Additionally, the technology currently is
available: the global community knows how to plant and grow
trees. These actions can be taken over the next several
decades, while improved technologies are developed to address the carbon problem over the long term. Finally, many
of the proposed forest-sequestration activities, such as tree
planting, provide other substantial noncarbon environmental benefits. Ignoring the sequestration potential of forest
sinks would also ignore the array of potential damages from
continued deforestation. ■
This article is based on an RFF Report by the authors, Forest Sequestration: Performance in Selected Countries in the Kyoto Period and
the Potential Role of Sequestration in Post-Kyoto Agreements. May
2006. Available at www.rff.org/rff/Documents/RFF-Rpt-ForestSequestra
tionKyoto.pdf.
22
RESOURCES
Inside RFF
Former Spofford Interns Continue to Work on
Chinese Environmental Issues
Ruth Greenspan Bell
R
FF established the Walter O. Spofford, Jr., Memorial Internship in
1997, in honor of Dr. Spofford’s
legacy. During his long career at RFF,
his name became synonymous with RFF’s
work in China. He helped launch RFF’s
China Program in 1989, mentored Chinese
researchers and policymakers, and helped
establish the Beijing Environment and
Development Institute (BEDI), an NGO
loosely modeled on RFF and headed by Ma
Zhong, now a well recognized Chinese environmental economist.
Dr. Spofford exemplified RFF’s goal to
engage in the environmental policy
debates of our times. In his memory,
every spring we review dozens of impressive applications to select one person with a special interest in Chinese
environmental issues to join RFF for
the summer. His name has become a
noun: we have now hosted nine “Spoffords.”
We recently contacted the Spoffords to find out what they are doing
and how their summer at RFF may
have affected their thinking about the
environment and their future professional plans.
Several have earned their graduate
degrees and are working on Chinese
environmental problems. When she
returned home to China from her
summer with RFF, our first Spofford
intern, Shuqin Liu, finished a Ph.D. at
Peking University in environmental
SUMMER 2006
law, while actively supporting various
multilateral development banks and
foreign consulting firms developing
projects such as sulfur dioxide emissions trading in China. She currently
lives with her husband in Nairobi,
where she has been freelancing with
the UN Environmental Programme
and other organizations since 2003.
Liu says that her time at RFF gave her
welcome exposure to American people and culture and a chance to learn
how a U.S. NGO operates.
Jiang Ru, our 2003 Spofford, holds
a Ph.D. from Stanford and is living in
the Washington, DC, area, where he
consults to the World Bank as an environmental specialist. He focuses on
projects to help China phase out its
production and consumption of
ozone-depleting substances, manage
and dispose of persistent organic pollutants, and reduce its nutrient discharge into the East Asia seas.
In February 2005, he testified before the U.S. Congressional Executive
Commission on environmental NGOs
in China.
Many former Spoffords are still in
graduate school. Following her 2002
internship, Chunxiang Li is currently
studying for a Ph.D. in resource economics at the University of Massachusetts. She says her experience at RFF
helped her with the application
process and gave her an idea of how
people from diverse fields contribute
to resource conservation. After graduation, she hopes to continue studying
agricultural markets and conducting
high-quality research, “just like what
the RFF scholars are doing.”
Xuehua Zhang, who stayed at RFF
for a year after her 2000 Spofford
ended to work on sulfur dioxide emissions trading in Taiyuan, is conducting
field research in China for her Stanford Ph.D. There, she is interviewing
judges, plaintiffs, and defendants in
several Hubei cities to explore the
efficacy of environmental legal redress.
Our 2005 Spofford, Hui He, returned to the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin,
after her summer at RFF and will graduate later this year. Her work at RFF
on local emissions-control initiatives in
various Chinese cities and provinces
led her to believe in the great potential of “providing multiple incentives
to producers and involving more public participation.” She will explore this
further in her professional report for
her master’s degree.
Dr. Spofford’s efforts still resonate
as China struggles to manage its considerable environmental challenges.
One legacy is BEDI and the work of
now-renowned experts who benefited
from his mentorship. Another is the
growing number of talented Spofford
interns who will provide innovations to
improve China’s environment and the
world’s. ■
23
Mining Executive
and New RFF
Board Member
Calls for Action on
Global Warming
P
reston Chiaro comes to the
RFF Board of Directors with a
belief that the energy sector as
a whole has yet to take the first step in
addressing climate change: “simply to
acknowledge the scope, scale, and seriousness of the problem and the need
to take action now, even in the face of
some remaining uncertainties.”
As chief executive of the Energy Division of Rio Tinto, Chiaro has responsibility for the company’s coal and uranium mining operations in Australia,
Namibia, and the United States. Rio
Tinto is a major supplier of uranium to
the nuclear power industry, a lowcarbon energy source that is attracting
renewed interest as an option for meeting worldwide energy demands. Chiaro
is also the senior executive in charge of
combustion capture, and monitoring
Rio Tinto’s climate change program.
systems for carbon dioxide storage
Energy companies, he says, need to
reservoirs will also be important as
engage in the policy debate to ensure
part of the effort to reduce emissions
that the decisions made by governfrom coal-fired generators, Chiaro
ments on behalf of their citizens
says.
are well informed and maximize enviAn environmental engineer by
ronmental, social, and economic
training—he received his B.S. and
outcomes. Companies must reduce
M.E. degrees at Renssetheir “climate footprint,”
laer Polytechnic InstiChiaro says, by conserving
tute, New York—Chiaro
energy in their production
has a particular interest
processes. He also wants
in sustainable developto see companies engage
ment. He oversaw
with their customers
cleanup projects at the
to help them address the
Bingham Canyon Mine,
issue at home.
the world’s largest openChiaro believes that
pit copper mine, and has
the critical new technolset up a sustainable deogy for fossil fuels, includvelopment leadership
ing coal, will be carbon
Preston Chiaro
panel at Rio Tinto “to
capture and storage. The
make sure that sustainable developcomponents of such systems have
ment becomes embedded in the orlong been available, but the technolganization’s DNA.”
ogy “package” needed to collect,
His background and thinking,
transport, and sequester carbon dioxChiaro says, “are very much aligned
ide in safe geologic repositories is just
with what RFF is trying to accomcoming on line. Rio Tinto is supportplish—to make a positive contribution
ing FutureGen, a U.S. Department of
toward responsible, pragmatic, longEnergy initiative to build the world’s
term policy thinking around resource
first near zero-emissions coal-fired
development.” He says he has long repower plant, which incorporates the
spected RFF “for the depth, clarity,
technology on a commercial scale. Aland independence” of its research. ∫
ternative combustion processes, post-
RFF sponsors a summer internship program
in which students from around the world work
with the research staff. Pictured here are some
of this year’s interns, from left:
Top row—Daniel Shawan, Laura Blessing,
Daniel Stone, RFF President Phil Sharp, Yi
Jiang, Griffin LeNoir, and Christina Dietrich.
Middle row—Andrew Fleeter, Prabirendra Chatterjee, Tingting Yan (Spofford intern), and John
Lekuton.
Bottom row—Francie Streich, Laura ChappellCampbell, Ada Chen, Roshni Rathi, and Scott
Salyer. Not pictured: David Bael, Yu-Ming
Chang, Joseph Edemeroh, Radha Jujjavarapu,
Leah Menzies, and Nicholas Powers.
24
RESOURCES
Recent Titles from RFF Press
The RFF Reader in Environmental
and Resource Policy
Second Edition
Wallace E. Oates, editor
Cloth, ISBN 1-933115-16-5 / $75.00
Paper, ISBN 1-933115-17-3 / $34.95
New Approaches on Energy and the
Environment
Policy Advice for the President
Richard D. Morgenstern and
Paul R. Portney, editors
Cloth, ISBN 1-933115-00-9 / $45.00
Paper, ISBN 1-933115-01-7 / $16.95
Emissions Trading, 2nd Edition
Principles and Practice
T. H. Tietenberg
Cloth, ISBN 1-933115-30-0 / $80.00
Paper, ISBN 1-933115-31-9 / $38.95
Zoned Out
Regulation, Markets, and Choices
in Transportation and Metropolitan
Land Use
Jonathan Levine
Cloth, ISBN 1-933115-14-9 / $65.00
Paper, ISBN 1-933115-15-7 / $26.95
The Forest Ranger
A Study in Administrative Behavior
Special Reprint Edition
Herbert Kaufman
Cloth, ISBN 1-933115-26-2 / $45.00
Paper, ISBN 1-933115-27-0 / $19.95
Democracy in Practice
Public Participation in Environmental
Decisions
Thomas C. Beierle and Jerry Cayford
Cloth, ISBN 1-891853-53-8 / $50.00
Paper, ISBN 1-891853-54-6 / $22.95
National Environmental Accounting
Bridging the Gap between Ecology
and Economy
Joy E. Hecht
Cloth, ISBN 1-891853-93-7 / $60.00
Paper, ISBN 1-891853-94-5 / $24.95
Private Rights in Public Resources
Equity and Property Allocation in
Market-Based Environmental Policy
Leigh Raymond
Cloth, ISBN 1-891853-69-4 / $55.00
Paper, ISBN 1-891853-68-6 / $23.95
China’s Forests
Global Lessons from Market Reforms
William F. Hyde, Brian Belcher, and
Jintao Xu, editors
Cloth, ISBN 1-891853-67-8 / $60.00
Paper, ISBN 1-891853-66-X / $26.95
TO ORDER, VISIT WWW.RFFPRESS.ORG OR CALL 800.537.5487 IN THE U.S. OR 410.516.6965
New from RFF Press
Environmental Life Cycle Assessment
of Goods and Services
An Input-Output Approach
Chris T. Hendrickson, Lester B. Lave, and
H. Scott Matthews
Cloth, ISBN 1-933115-23-8 / $80.00
Paper, ISBN 1-933115-24-6 / $35.00
Leveraging the Private Sector
Economics and Contemporary
Management-Based Strategies for
Land Use Policy
Improving Environmental Performance Development and Conservation at the
Rural-Urban Fringe
Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash, editors
Cloth, ISBN 1-891853-95-3 / $60.00
Paper, ISBN 1-891853-96-1 / $24.95
Robert J. Johnston and Stephen K. Swallow,
editors
Cloth, ISBN 1-933115-21-1 / $70.00
Paper, ISBN 1-933115-22-X / $36.95
TO ORDER, VISIT WWW.RFFPRESS.ORG OR CALL 800.537.5487 IN THE U.S. OR 410.516.6965
NON-PROFIT
US POSTAGE PAID
1616 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036-1400
return service requested
PERMIT NO. 3361
BALTIMORE, MD